Former President Donald Trump is attempting to turn the whole Republican Party into a "fief of MAGA" by stacking key positions throughout the party and public office with members of his own family — and there's no telling how far he'll take it, warned Michelle Cottle in a blistering column for The New York Times.
This comes after reports that he is pushing for his daughter-in-law Lara Trump to hold a senior position at the Republican National Committee, and was even trial ballooning the idea of his son-in-law Jared Kushner being appointed Secretary of State in a second term — although Kushner himself appears to be against the idea.
"One might have assumed Mr. Trump would have been sated by giving the heave-ho to his once-loyal lackey, Ronna McDaniel, and endorsing Michael Whatley, the head of the North Carolina state party, to be the Republican National Committee’s main chairman," wrote Cottle. "Mr. Whatley has proved his MAGA chops with his energetic embrace of Mr. Trump’s election-fraud baloney. Assuming Mr. Whatley is elected to the post, the odds of him exhibiting any independent judgment in his new role are next to nil. Still, when it comes to the installation of blindly loyal minions, Mr. Trump is a belt-and-suspenders kind of guy. And, after all, family is family."
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It's not exactly unique to Trump for presidents to give loyalists favorable jobs in the party, Cottle noted — many of Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden's loyalists, for example, have gotten party jobs. But there's a key difference with how Trump does it.
Specifically, she wrote, "The truly Trumpian wrinkle here is that the MAGA king doesn’t care about any qualification other than blind loyalty. That whole 'best people' nonsense from his first presidential go-round has fallen by the wayside for now. Ms. Trump could be as dumb as a brick (though I have no reason to think so) and he’d still consider her the perfect co-head for his R.N.C. — arguably all the more perfect, since people lacking their own vision tend to be easier to control."
That is significant because already the GOP is reportedly drafting plans to replace the whole civil service with an army of loyalists.
"The election is still months away," Cottle concluded. "And the really plum jobs won’t open up unless Mr. Trump prevails. Only then could any full-employment plan for his kin and other loyalists achieve full potential."
